


Objects at Rest

by TheSkyLarkin



Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [8]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt No Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mute Gordon Freeman, Novelization, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Video Game Mechanics, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27026917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyLarkin/pseuds/TheSkyLarkin
Summary: (Black Mesa Remake) Upon discovering the healing pools of Xen, Gordon gets a rare moment to relax… or not. Or, the end of Lambda Core and the beginning of Xen, but make it whumpier.Challenge: Whumptober 2020Prompts: No. 15 - "Into the Unknown” “Magical Healing” “Science Gone Wrong”No. 18 - “Panic Attacks”No. 20 - “Toto, I Have a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore” “Lost” “Field Medicine”See End Notes for comprehensive warnings/tags
Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946617
Kudos: 20
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Objects at Rest

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to cherryslibrary ([Tumblr](https://cherryslibrary.tumblr.com/)/[Ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryslibrary/pseuds/cherryslibrary)) for beta reading!

“Almost there, Freeman…” The voice over the intercom was barely audible amidst the cacophony of whirling heavy machinery, otherworldly shrieking, pulsing zaps from alien weaponry, and volleys of gunfire. “Get yourself into position.”

[ _Easier said than done_!] Gordon wanted to retort, but he had his hands full with the cumbersome Tau Cannon now that his MP5 had run out of ammunition. Another wave of aliens had just teleported into the portal room in familiar bursts of sickly green lightning, including more of those floating ones with the glowing, protruding brains he hadn’t encountered up until now. If it didn’t take so much ammunition to take them down or their seemingly telekinetic energy blasts didn’t hit so hard, Gordon might almost find them silly-looking…

...or not, as a barrage of said powerful energy blasts slammed into him from behind, launching him right off the platform he’d been standing on before he could react. “Major Fracture Detected,” the monotonous voice of the HEV suit’s AI announced dutifully as he crashed into the floor of the portal room at an awkward angle. For the second time today (or had it happened yesterday? He couldn’t remember right now), Gordon felt the bone in his left shoulder snap out of its socket upon impact, as well as another stabbing pain somewhere in his right leg—where the offending major fracture seemed to be located, judging by how it could barely support his weight without sending jolts of pain coursing through his body as he scrambled back up.

Wait, “major fracture”? That wasn’t even that bad of a fall, compared to— Oh right, he’d landed on it at an odd angle a couple of times on the cliff, which he hadn’t paid much attention to at the time due to being shot at. The bone must have finally been aggravated by enough blunt force trauma to break. The HEV suits were tough but were never meant for prolonged, days-long combat scenarios. (Their creator had probably never intended for the environmental hazards it would protect against to include squadrons of HECU Marines or aircraft artillery, to name a few.) It only occurred to Gordon now that maybe, just maybe, he ought to have swapped out his already damaged suit before agreeing to travel to a hostile alien dimension.

But it was too late now, as the portal to Xen was nearly complete. Gordon waited until the robotic voice declared that morphine had been administered (he’d heard that message from the AI so many times over the past forty-eight hours that he couldn’t even feel the numbing effects of the drug in his system anymore) before trying to shove the dislocated bone back into its socket once again. It still hurt like hell, but not enough that he was unable to pull out his crossbow (which was thankfully just light enough to aim with one hand) and return fire against the shrieking alien hovering towards him. It hit the ground with a final sickening splat, snot-green blood leaking out of its punctured cranium.

One down, a roomful more to go…

Another burst of blinding light filled the room, and the intercom crackled to life as the beams of the four massive lasers finally coalesced into a bright blue orb at the center of the room. “It’s ready! You must go, now!” The scientist in the operating booth above, who hadn’t so much as introduced himself to Gordon earlier, insisted frantically above the din.

Thankfully, the portal had manifested level to the floor, otherwise Gordon might not have managed to reach it with his newly injured leg after he managed to duck and hobble past the massive alien grunts blocking his path. It only took one burst of air from the new long jump module to propel him into the swirling portal, leaving the alien-infested Black Mesa facility behind in a mere instant as he was briefly blinded by a searing light.

Bright, blue swirling liquid covered his vision for the briefest of moments (reminding him of that old sci-fi tv series his college roommate in sophomore year had been obsessed with) before Gordon was launched into a swirling vortex of purple and blue light. Streaks of orange light raced past him as he was flung about, and Gordon was suddenly reminded of the storm from The Wizard of Oz. His grandmother used to read his mother the books when she was a kid, so it had become a family tradition to watch the movie on Thanksgiving, as it usually fell on or close to grandma’s birthday.

While his parents and kid brother could still drum up some enthusiasm for that old movie they’d seen loads of times, Gordon had barely tolerated it until he moved out for college. Now, he’d gotten some newfound sympathy for Dorothy; he was surrounded by solar energies and dark matter rather than storm clouds and gale-force winds, but he certainly felt just as directionless and tossed about as that farmhouse in a tornado.

Gradually, Gordon became aware of another… consciousness in this tunnel between dimensions, as if something were watching him through his own eyes. Suddenly everything around him turned red, and the monstrous face of some massive alien creature with spindly, clawed hands clutching a crimson orb of light loomed towards him just before his vision went white again.

* * *

Gordon woke up gasping for breath to the sound of machinery powering down, face down on a small platform as the emitters around the edges of the device retracted and the lights dimmed. His whole body ached as if he’d just been slammed into a wall like a crash test dummy, but the HEV suit was not registering any impact trauma whatsoever. Perhaps it was just all the accumulated aches and pains of the last forty-eight hours or so coming back with a vengeance as his body tried to adjust to the gravity and atmosphere of an entirely different dimension.

As he peeled himself off the floor, Gordon found himself in a dark cave full of glowing alien flora and large orange clusters of crystals humming with power, scattered amongst the scientific equipment prominently labeled with the Black Mesa trademark. (Just in case Aperture Science ever tried to take credit for the expedition to deep space that resulted in an alien invasion of New Mexico, Gordon supposed.) A nebula-filled sky was just visible from the mouth of the cave, along with a faint red light.

Had he not been through two days and counting of absolute hell, Gordon would have immediately gone over to examine the crystal clusters scattered across the cave. From this distance, he could already spot several that were far purer than the one that had set off the Resonance Cascade. (So this was where all of the “samples” he’d been testing for weeks had been taken from… He hadn’t gotten the level of the security clearance necessary to know about the Xen expedition, or even that Black Mesa had developed a sophisticated enough portal technology capable of breaking through into other dimensions at all.)

Or at the very least, he would have dug through the notes left behind by the survey team. (Was all of the alien life in this cave carbon-based, or had they run into some hybrid species? Was the pool of “water” in the center of the cave actually water, or another liquid because dihydrogen monoxide couldn’t exist in a liquid state in the current atmosphere? If it could support the flora scattered around the cave, was said atmosphere breathable to humans without long-term effects? He wasn’t about to take off his helmet and check, but...)

But now? He just wanted to get this over with, even though he didn’t even have a clear idea of what “this” entailed. The scientists at the Lambda complex supposedly had readings to back up their theory of one singular, powerful being holding together a portal between Xen and Earth through sheer concentration alone (that none of them had bothered to share with him), but that theory was all he had to go on. What would such an entity even look like? Just how big was the border world? (They hadn’t even bothered to give him a basic map of the alien dimension…) Would he be able to track down said entity before Earth was overrun by aliens? And how was he supposed to defeat a being who could maintain a portal across dimensions _with its mind_ with a handful of guns, three grenades, and two rockets?

Perhaps he should have been more efficient with his limited ammo back in the portal room…

As he slowly approached the mouth of the cave, Gordon found the source of the red light. An ominous tower loomed in the far distance, topped with what looked like a glowing crimson orb like the Eye of Sauron if The Lord of the Rings had been a science fiction epic and Mordor a cluster of massive planetoids floating in the uncharted void of space lit by an iridescent blue sun. Upon exiting the cave and reaching the edge of the planetoid that he had been transported to, Gordon could see more asteroids of various sizes floating in the distance, suspended in a field of lower gravity. Yet somehow there had to be enough gravity generated to support the atmosphere that a flock of some kind of large bat-like aliens was flying through, followed by—

Gordon nearly leaped out of his suit as one of the giant manta ray-esque aliens flew in from out of nowhere after the smaller creatures. Without thinking, he instinctively armed his rocket launcher—back at Black Mesa, he’d seen one of those things take out a tank! They’d taken on fighter jets and won!—when another flew past on his right side with no warning. But after a moment they lazily floated out of his field of view as quickly as they’d come, without a care in the world, before he could fire off a shot.

As they went on their way peacefully, Gordon realized that he could feel his heart pounding rapidly and there was a noticeable tightness in his throat as he put the rocket launcher away. It took him a second to realize what was going on; he hadn’t had one of these episodes since the night before his doctoral thesis defense. Moving back into the safety of the cave, he tried to steady his breathing and bring his heart rate down. A hostile alien world was the worst possible place for a panic attack.

A quick press of a button with slightly trembling fingers and Gordon could watch his heart rate return to normal in real-time via the HUD in his suit as his breathing evened out and he sank down onto a pile of discarded equipment cases thrown together haphazardly by the mouth of the cave. He went through the mental checklist: No chills or hot flashes. No abdominal cramps. The chest pain he was experiencing was probably due to damage he’d taken in that last fight rather than the panic attack. There was a slight pressure in his temples, but no nausea, thank goodness. (Without a guarantee that he wouldn’t die immediately upon removing his helmet, it’d be nearly impossible to hurl in space.)

What else was on that list? Oh right, “a feeling of unreality and detachment” and a “sense of impending doom or danger”. Yeah, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about that...

Taking a deep breath, Gordon decided to approach the problem from another angle. Perhaps the creatures had only been hostile because they’d been plucked from their home and sent into an alien dimension where the native wildlife had immediately started attacking them. The rays had probably cut a swathe of carnage through the HECU forces not with the intent of wiping them all out, but because they were trying to defend themselves.

Just like him, in a way.

After a few moments, his vital signs had returned to normal according to the HUD. (Numbers were objective and absolute, you couldn’t go wrong with numbers.) Limping slowly, Gordon finally ventured back outside to the precipice of the planetoid to appreciate the sweeping vista laid out before him. Belts of stars illuminated massive planetoids floating in an indigo-purple sky, like majestic mountains reflected in a perfectly still cosmic lake. Even the floating chunks of space debris didn’t detract from the awe of seeing glistening nebula clouds swirling around a blue-tinted sun with his own eyes rather than through pictures from a telescope.

Gordon just stood there for a few moments, soaking in the view, and hoping that this wasn’t just all the morphine going to his head.

‘ _Toto_ ,’ he thought with the first small smile he'd managed in days, ‘ _I have a feeling we’re_ definitely _not in New Mexico anymore._ ’

* * *

Once the sheer awe of finding himself in _outer space_ had worn out (and the pain in his leg became too unbearable), Gordon weighed his options and decided that his best bet would be to head towards the ominous tower floating in the dead center of the planetoid field. If there was in fact an entity powerful enough to maintain portals across dimensions, it was most likely responsible for the maintenance of an atmosphere and gravitational field across the connecting planetoids that collectively shouldn’t have had enough mass to maintain either for themselves. After all, the aliens hadn’t started choking upon arriving on Earth, so it was a reasonable assumption that the atmosphere here on Xen must be of similar composition.

(He still wasn’t about to remove his helmet and find out though. After coming across the bodies of the unfortunate Lambda Survey Team and more headcrabs, this seemed like a very wise choice.)

A closer look at the tower revealed that it was composed of something twisted and organic, with a massive cloud of space debris (could be anything from cosmic dust to small meteorites, it was still hard to tell from this distance) swirling at the base. More of those flying creatures were circling around the red orb, which seemed to be held in place by a hand-like platform that was actually floating above the top of the tower itself. Such a gravity-defying structure that seemed to act as the center of gravity in the vacuum of space was as good a place as any to start.

The only issue with that was the apparent lack of any sort of path towards the tower. In fact, there was nothing connecting the various planetoids to one another, not even the one he currently found himself on… or so it had seemed. In his search for a way off this rock, Gordon found a few of the ramps that the survey team had constructed for the long jump module and the border world’s lower gravity, leading down and around through a cave and a series of smaller planetoids. He’d been worried about his injured leg being further aggravated by the leaps, but the lower gravity of Xen and the shock resistance of the HEV suit meant that he’d made the first jump with only a twinge of pain in his right leg. Hopefully, it would hold up for the rest of his journey...

Upon approaching the second ramp, Gordon saw that it pointed to a series of massive pools carved into an asteroid, filled with a cyan and slightly luminescent liquid that was cascading down in narrow, dripping waterfalls from the asteroids above somehow. Setting aside the fact that the mystery liquid seemed to be dripping out at an infinite rate with no visible source, Gordon’s biggest issue was that there seemed to be no way forwards except to leap into the pool. The positioning of the ramp indicated that the survey team had all done so… the very same survey team that was all currently missing or dead…

But he couldn’t see any other possible way forward from here. With as much of a running start as his aching leg would afford him, Gordon leaped off the ramp at an angle, aiming for a large cluster of rocks at the inner edge of the center pool. There was just enough charge in the rockets of the long jump module to get him to land on his target... only for his right foot to slip and send him flailing wildly, headfirst, into the mysterious liquid.

Frantically, Gordon fought his way to the surface, just waiting for the HEV’s AI to inform him of the presence of hazardous chemicals, biohazards, and/or radiation… but the dreaded announcement never came. In fact, the numbers at the bottom of his suit’s HUD seemed to be increasing (which he’d up until recently believed to be just a placebo effect—how could you quantify a person's overall health into a series of numbers?) the longer he stood in the pool—which ended up being only waist-deep once he’d found his footing. (He really hoped that the cameras in the HEV suit had ceased to function back at Black Mesa, or he was never going to live it down if Barney or one of the guys ever came across this footage…)

Speaking of which, the cyan fluid didn’t seem acidic, yet it was seeping through the high-impact reactive armor and into the undersuit beneath. Gordon didn’t notice until he nearly doubled over in pain as the bone in his right leg fused itself back together from the earlier fracture. Once the muscles and sinew had knitted together again in a final agonizing twist, the pain disappeared entirely, as if the injury had never occurred. As he tested the newly healed limb by shifting his weight, Gordon realized that a lot of the aches and pains in his lower body seemed to have vanished as well...

What in the world was in this stuff… and why hadn’t they shoved it into every single medkit in Black Mesa when he could’ve used it hours ago!? Or at the very least included a vial of it with every HEV suit; it was infinitely more useful than the morphine...

Perhaps the chemical composition of the fluid meant that it wouldn’t be able to exist in its current form on Earth or it simply wouldn’t survive the trip back to Black Mesa, Gordon thought as he let himself fall backward into the pool. There was an ambient hum seemingly coming from the luminescent liquid itself as the HEV suit granted him just enough buoyancy to keep his head above the surface while the itching and spikes of pain across his body told him that the contents of the pool were working their magic.

If he was going to fight some kind of all-powerful being, shouldn’t he be as healed and well-rested as he could get? He couldn’t do anything about his lack of rest (the only sleep he’d gotten in the last forty-eight hours had come with a concussion when the marines had knocked him out and left him for dead) or food (and the only water he’d drunk this whole time had been whatever had inadvertently leaked through his helmet, which was probably contaminated with toxins and _definitely_ contaminated with radiation), but he could at least take care of his injuries here. (If there was some kind of side effect… well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.)

Content to simply float there for a moment, he looked up at the sky above, far too bright and blue and full of stars to be mistaken for Earth’s. (If he weren’t utterly drained of energy, he could’ve named the chemical composition of the atmosphere in order for it to have its iridescent blue coloration or the proper terms for every cluster of stars that hung in the sky.) Gordon was reminded of the eye-searingly colorful trapper-keepers that every girl in his middle school had owned. Which got him thinking about his childhood home and the family he hadn’t spoken to in years… Had the invasion from Xen been contained to just Black Mesa, or were there portals to a hostile alien dimension opening up all over the country? Or even the world? Even if he were to locate the source of the portal and shut it down, would there be anything left of Black Mesa—or human civilization at all for that matter—when he returned?

...that was assuming that he returned at all. The military had been in the process of carpet-bombing the entire facility when he’d left; he thought he’d heard something about a nuclear warhead as he’d passed by an unattended radio, but that might have been his exhausted mind playing tricks on him. If there was no way to contact his colleagues back on Earth (assuming they survived the attack anyway) and no way to get the portal machine working from Xen, how was he supposed to get back after completing his mission? Would he just be stranded here, in the far reaches of space with no hope of escape?

‘ _There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…_ ’

And in the event that he did manage to fix the problem and return to Earth: he’d be going back as a wanted fugitive at best, and an enemy of the state at worst. How many HECU marines had he killed? Until two days ago, Gordon had never shot at another human being except in video games. (One of his college lab partners had been a PC gaming hipster, and goaded him into playing through the original DOOM trilogy “as it was supposed to be played” over one semester.) Hell, he’d never picked up a gun before until Barney signed him up for firearms training as a joke, and he only went through with it as an excuse to hang out with him on company time.

(He’d later gotten an email from someone in admin that he’d been signed up for more time in the shooting range, with double pay as an incentive. Only now he realizes that they were probably scouting him for the next survey team…)

So if he did make it back to a civilization that was still standing, there was _absolutely_ an arrest warrant in his future, and that was only if he was lucky and they didn’t just stage an “accident” to save on paperwork. There was no way that the Black Mesa administration wouldn’t use him as a scapegoat for the Resonance Cascade incident and related fallout, not when the HECU had been targeting him specifically rather than any of his colleagues...

... if any of them had made it through the whole ordeal alive anyway. Gordon had seen so many of his friends and coworkers mauled by aliens or cut down by the marines… aside from the lucky scientists hunkered down in the Lambda Core, who was left alive at this point?

...was this whole catastrophe his fault, at least in some capacity?

It took a minute for Gordon to notice the chest pains, the shaking in his hands, and the rapid beeping of heightened vital signs according to the HEV suit. Were it in his capacity to do so, he’d run an experiment to see what happens when one tries to scream into the vacuum of space when there was no one else around to hear it. But all he could do was get his heart rate and breathing back under control before pulling himself out of the pool and searching for the way forward.

Time to get back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is appreciated! (Especially since I have no scientific background whatsoever, and I haven't played any of the games in this series in a few years...)
> 
> Triggers/Warnings: Major Injuries, PTSD, Anxiety, Emotional/Psychological Whump


End file.
